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Odd Thoughts: Fear the Deer

Who knew I would be able to watch two episodes of American Horror Story on Wednesday night.

Look there is almost no reason to even review this game because honestly there is just nothing to take away from this. We are bad, in fact we are putrid, but we aren’t really this bad.

Right now talent be damned this is almost all mental. I mean for players who are actually dependable solid basketball players (David West) are missing wide open bread and butter shots for him while other players who may not be as mentally stable (Roy Hibbert) are missing equally easy shots for him.

A lot of their shots seemed rushed but beyond that after watching over the past few games I think we need to get them to maybe focus on just some fundamentally sound basketball shots and stop with the running one handed hook shots or one handed runners that both of them are just not getting to drop.

Maybe just focus on a straight up face up jumper from a couple of feet for a short time to see if that works.

Also with Roy I am now thinking we need to change up with him and stop trying to force him into scoring. I know it goes against everything any of us believe in because we want that low post thing working for us but maybe it’s time to pull Roy out of the deep post for a few possessions and let him work the exterior for awhile. I think right now Roy needs less pressure and every bunny he misses seems to send him deeper and deeper into a shame spiral.

I think we need to tell him to dominate on the glass and become that interior defensive force that he was last year and let the scoring come as it will.

Contract be damned at this point. If that is what it takes to get him back to at least being a serviceable center again then that is what I want.

Also is it my imagination or does Roy look like he has gained weight? Not saying he’s out of shape by any means but when I think about what he looked like last season he seems to be much thicker. Could just be me, I don’t know.

Also I always give a shout out to Scott Skiles whenever we play a team he is coaching. Even if he doesn’t have the players to play defense he somehow always manages to have a good defensive team.

I know we don’t need to talk about Danny Granger every game but I found this post game quote by David West telling.

“He’s the centerpiece to this offense. To kind of lose him right now where we are we thought that we could just fill in without him. It is taking us a while to adjust to him not being here but that’s not a reason to not go out and compete. We need to be able to make things happen for us.”

BTW, I agree with David there is no excuse for not competing but it does go one step further to state how important Granger is to our club. Sorry I keep bringing that stuff up but for the past 3 years we have been inundated with people telling us how poor Danny is or over the past couple of years how we should just move him so Paul George can move to his natural position so yes I’m making sure some of this gets brought to the for front.

Tyler has played well enough on defense this year that he deserves to have one of these garbage time big point games and nobody should hound him for it. I know the thought is that when the game no longer matters he is at his best but he has given us solid effort almost all of the time this year so he has earned a good offensive game.

George Hill got caught up in hero ball tonight, I can sympathize with him because nobody else could hit, but more often than not hero ball ends up with the results that we ended up with from him tonight. He’s played good ball almost all season so I’ll forgive him this game.

Now before I hit the bullet points I want to talk a min. about Donnie Walsh and what some of you newer posters need to understand about him.

If Donnie is in charge, which to be honest I am not sure how the front office is structured right now because I read one report saying Walsh was only here this year. But if he is in charge let me give you a cold shot of reality.

Donnie does nothing under pressure. In other words if you think he has to make a trade or fire a coach or make some move for the sake of making a move then you are in for a long protracted winter of discontent.

As long as Danny’s injury is out there they have a built in excuse to tell everyone to be patient. Now if they think Danny’s injury is worse than what they are letting on then they might be making a move (in fact if they make a significant move I am going to be really worried for Danny’s career).

But I’ve lived through this before and I can tell you Donnie is nothing if not patient. His sycophant Montieth will be more than happy to tell you that he doesn’t make trades for the sake of trade and he does not make knee jerk reactions. Now understand that everyone else in the free world might consider a trade the right move but in Donnie’s world it is knee jerk 9 out of 10 times.

Believe me when I saw he was coming back it was like groundhogs day for me, one nightmare just lived over and over.

Let’s hit the bullet points.

• Lance needs to shoot the ball more. In fact seeing as how he has the highest field goal % of any of our wings I would suggest we start looking to let him get his shot more often if we can.
• The 3 combined free throw attempts by our starting forward tandem is pretty disgusting.
• Gerald Green quietly put together a decent offensive game. He was burned on defense several times but when we are struggling so bad on the offensive end anyone hitting a shot should be cheered at this point.
• A good point made by the broadcast team tonight is that while the defense has been solid they are not creating turnovers like they did last season that led to the transition points we were getting.
• Paul George’s trade value will never be higher.
• Monta Ellis was finally able to get a win vs. the Pacers of course it took Danny not being there for him to finally do it but who’s counting.
• Mahinmi getting 7 min. in this blow out? I’m starting to wonder if Frank isn’t bucking at losing Lou. Remember last season he wouldn’t play Fez over Lou either so I think Frank really liked what Lou brought to the team.
• As another poster brilliantly stated I wonder if Agustin won’t be in the D league next year. Dude is just horrid.
• Sam Young had a decent game, he didn’t have to pass much so it worked out for him this time.

Look guys I’m as down as all of you are but even I will tell you to shake this one off. We are bad but we aren’t this bad. It’s just a combination of two bad games in a row making this look really bad. Every team has blow outs and this one was just ours.

I don’t know that they can right the ship to where we want to go but I think in the next week or two they should be playing at a higher level than this.

However to the eternal optimist out there I want to state one reason why some of us are so concerned. This was game 9 for the year & I have yet to see one good game from our team. We’ve had a couple of good quarters but not yet one good game. In fact we’ve had very few good quarters for that matter.

Basketball isn't played with computers, spreadsheets, and simulations. ChicagoJ 4/21/13

Re: Odd Thoughts: Fear the Deer

You know better than I do when it comes to Walsh.......but you have to wonder what Bird is thinking now. I'm not suggesting that he'd make a rash move if he were in charge.....but I can see him right now either being mad as h*ll that the Team is doing terribly now or laughing it off thinking to himself, "Wow....I'm glad I'm not dealing with that mess".

As for Lance......I'm all for giving him as many minutes as he can handle and to take the leash off of him when it comes to scoring.....if PG isn't willing to take over on the offensive end....then let Lance do his best impression of Dwayne Wade.

Another thing.....I liked what I saw from Plumlee at the end of the game. Last season...if Vogel preferred to play an athletic Big Man like Lou over Fez....then I'd have no problem giving Plumlee ( a super athletic Big Man that is super long ) just to see what he can do.

Re: Odd Thoughts: Fear the Deer

nother thing.....I liked what I saw from Plumlee at the end of the game. Last season...if Vogel preferred to play an athletic Big Man like Lou over Fez....then I'd have no problem giving Plumlee ( a super athletic Big Man that is super long ) just to see what he can do.

I agree. The team isn't winning with Roy or Ian, so give Plumjam an opportunity. I'd even go further and bench Augustin and let Ben Hans have his minutes.

I truly wouldn't mind seeing OJ get some PT. He can't be any worse as a shooter last night than

Re: Odd Thoughts: Fear the Deer

It's certainly possible that we hit our peak. We won 63% of our games, a playoff series, and took the Heat to 6 games. Any improvement on that would put us into very elite territory. If we won more regular season games than that then we'd have a super elite winning percentage. If we went a step further in the playoff series then that means we'd be in the conference finals. Right now, this team doesn't look like it is capable of any of that, though as you say, it's impossible to know for sure without Granger.

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Re: Odd Thoughts: Fear the Deer

I do wonder how many coaches say the same thing Skiles said about other NBA teams. Seems like a good motivating tool - get your team motivated to have a good start. I bet most coaches say that about most NBA teams. I don't read too much into Skiles comments

Re: Odd Thoughts: Fear the Deer

I almost posted in the "bright side" thread that at least we wouldn't have to consider the Toronto game the worst game of the season any more...

If nothing else, last night showed just how good our defense has been to keep us in games. When the defense fails like it did last night, the blowout happens because the offense is still putrid.

I'm thinking the same as Peck, it is time to go back to fundamentals. Half our turnovers seem to be on attempts to throw for an alley-oop that is off on its timing, or on behind the body or over the head passes. The other half are on ball control against any kind of pressure defense - not even forced, just being so concerned about someone stealing the ball that we dribble it off a body part.

The truth is that we will be a long time coming to get easy points in the paint if no one can hit from more than 5 feet out. Every time someone gets the ball near the basket defenses just throw everyone at him - which both triple-teams a shooter and effectively steals any possible rebounding position. Unless we can force defenses to pay attention to us on the outside, I would venture to say no one other than a Shaq in his prime simply running over defenders with impunity would be able to be effective down low.

BillS

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Or throw in a first-round pick and flip it for a max-level point guard...

Re: Odd Thoughts: Fear the Deer

I do wonder how many coaches say the same thing Skiles said about other NBA teams. Seems like a good motivating tool - get your team motivated to have a good start. I bet most coaches say that about most NBA teams. I don't read too much into Skiles comments

I wouldn't except for the fact the Pacers DO completely deflate if teams get a strong series against them. Doesn't have to be at the start of the game - as soon as someone begins a run we can't seem to cope.

BillS

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Or throw in a first-round pick and flip it for a max-level point guard...

Re: Odd Thoughts: Fear the Deer

Great post, the only thing I might disagree with is that DW doesn't make trades for the sake of it. We needed to tweek our bench and the least we could have done with 10 mil in cap space would have been to upgrade our backup center. We didn't need to dump most of our bench for players that gave no clear upgrade and when you do that it hurts your chemistry. We should have offered Kaman a multi year deal and called it a day. I could have lived with Ian although I don't like his contract. Dumping DC, Jones and Barbosa so we could bring in AJ and Green never made sense to me. That is almost like making change for the sake of it. We'd have a winning record right now without those moves.

Re: Odd Thoughts: Fear the Deer

Great post, the only thing I might disagree with is that DW doesn't make trades for the sake of it. We needed to tweek our bench and the least we could have done with 10 mil in cap space would have been to upgrade our backup center. We didn't need to dump most of our bench for players that gave no clear upgrade and when you do that it hurts your chemistry. We should have offered Kaman a multi year deal and called it a day. I could have lived with Ian although I don't like his contract. Dumping DC, Jones and Barbosa so we could bring in AJ and Green never made sense to me. That is almost like making change for the sake of it. We'd have a winning record right now without those moves.

No, we wouldn't. They aren't the problem. The problem is with the starters. Granger still would be out and the starters would still struggle to score... The problem is that some posters here were sold a bill of goods that some way out stats showed that we had the best starting unit in the NBA. We didn't and we have the same players minus Granger..... Those bench changes were minor and would not cause this melt down.....

Re: Odd Thoughts: Fear the Deer

When you start to think about all the things Granger is the "best at" on this team on offense, it gets a little daunting.

He is the best long ranger shooter, he is the best mid ranger shooter, he maybe the best finisher in traffic, he is the best guy at switching between half court and up tempo, he is the best guy off the basketball (both looking to score and looking to help people out), he might be the best person on the team at setting picks and screens.

It didn't become as clear til you see the dumpster fire Pacers offense without him, but yeah....

The problem is that some posters here were sold a bill of goods that some way out stats showed that we had the best starting unit in the NBA. We didn't and we have the same players minus Granger..... Those bench changes were minor and would not cause this melt down.

So basically when we're bad we are just as bad as our record and play show us to be, but when our record and on-court play showed us as being good they were lying.

Seems a little inconsistent to me.

BillS

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Or throw in a first-round pick and flip it for a max-level point guard...

Re: Odd Thoughts: Fear the Deer

I wouldn't except for the fact the Pacers DO completely deflate if teams get a strong series against them. Doesn't have to be at the start of the game - as soon as someone begins a run we can't seem to cope.

yes, I have seen that in three of the first 9 games. All on the road - at SA, ATL and at MIL. it is always a problem, but it isn't a Pacers only problem - pretty common across the NBA

Re: Odd Thoughts: Fear the Deer

Hindsight is a beautiful thing, eh? I'm not very smart, but I started to fear this in the preseason. All the exciement was about the top 10 dunks and alley-oops. All show all the time. This is he Eastern Conference where strength, will and the ability to take a hit still wins ball games.I thought the showoff fever would go away when Danny came back(an I still do). The kind of Iwork Tyler and Foster and Dale Davis give never make the highlight films, but they win ball games and hold teams together. I don't know if Plumlee and OJ could function in this period of time, but they might. They might just be ruined by the culture we are quickly building of lying down and quitting. I expect to see Dvid West slap some teammate at any given time. We are screwing up his last contract plans badly.

Re: Odd Thoughts: Fear the Deer

When you start to think about all the things Granger is the "best at" on this team on offense, it gets a little daunting.

He is the best long ranger shooter, he is the best mid ranger shooter, he maybe the best finisher in traffic, he is the best guy at switching between half court and up tempo, he is the best guy off the basketball (both looking to score and looking to help people out), he might be the best person on the team at setting picks and screens.

It didn't become as clear til you see the dumpster fire Pacers offense without him, but yeah....

West is using the Danny Crutch because his coach is. The coach rubs off on the players, that's what coaches do. Doesn't mean Danny Granger is was or will be anywhere near as good as people here would like to believe. He's a good shooter and plays with fire, but let's not allow excuses and romanticizing the past to cloud our judgement of the team: we did not lose John Wall, Kevin Love, Dirk Nowitzki, etc. And the teams we've played (or will have played as of tomorrow night) have had a more significant (franchise) player go down and they are playing a lot harder.

The Pacers aren't playing with intensity. They are not making adjustments. They are running terrible plays. That does not fall on an injured player, unless he's also the head coach. The Granger Clutch is old already. I'm not sure if I can put up with 3 more months of it, only for him to be 30 and coming off injury next year. Let's have some accountability and less grasping at straws.

Re: Odd Thoughts: Fear the Deer

So basically when we're bad we are just as bad as our record and play show us to be, but when our record and on-court play showed us as being good they were lying.

Seems a little inconsistent to me.

Why bother? Really. I wouldn't even reply to those sentiments. If we are really this bad (bottom 4 of the league) then our bench last year was amazing. Danny Granger is a top 10 player. And Darren Collison was the most important player last year.

Now losing Darren hurts. But not this much. Losing Danny hurts, but not this much. And losing Lou doesn't really hurt at all.

Not getting Dragic, Stiesma, and Mayo hurts IMO. But not to the point that we are where we are at. That is crazy stupid talk. It is mental as well as other factors.